Configurable Product vs Grouped Product in Magento 2

June 28, 2017 Hannah Nguyen 0 comment(s)

You must be familiar with these 2 popular types of Magento product: configurable product and grouped product.

Magento Configurable Product is composed by multiple single products coming with diverse variation. Each variation is displayed with a list of attribute options for customers to choose. You can sell clothes with this kind of Magento product; eg: a t-shirt having multiple color and size.

You are confused about Configurable Product and Simple Product with custom options, check this article.

Magento Grouped Product is made up of simple standalone products that are presented as a group. All related products can be bought separately; eg: a knife set with different size.

1. Appearance

Magento Configurable Product:

Magento Grouped Product:

Whereas, grouped product like its name, it looks like you are selling a group of products.

Magento 2 Grouped Product in the frontend

2. Associated Product

Both children product of configurable product and grouped product can be sold individually. However, they still have some differences between them. Let’s see:

Magento Configurable Product:

You cannot add multiple associated products of configurable product to cart. Why? Because, as you know, configurable product in Magento 2 is presented as drop-down or selected box, customers add children products to cart only by choosing value of attributes and inputting quantity for that item. It is inconvenient for merchants and B2B if they want to order in bulk. That is one of reasons why there are many extensions for configurable product in Magento 2 for the purpose of wholesale.

Magento Grouped Product:

Meanwhile, you can easily and conveniently add multiple constituting products of grouped product to cart. Due to the way showing simple product of grouped product in the Magento 2 frontend, these simple items are shown with their own quantity box so that customers can input quantity for many children products as wish then add all of them to cart at once. However this also has several drawbacks like showing a long list of constituting items in the product page will lead to inferior visuals.

3. Price

Magento Configurable Product:

With Magento 2 configurable product, you have to do the math to get price. The price of chidlren product will be equaled the price of configurable product plus the price of chosen attributes.

Let’s us explain more.

For instance, in the product page of a configurable product, a T-shirt has price $30, if children product have different prices, that means, a red-M is $40, a red-L is $45. However in the frontend, it doesn’t show price of children product, it justs present as form +$10 for red in color attribute in this case. In this situation, in the backend, you have to mark the red color as $10 and the L size as $5, in order to get true price $40 and $45for the red-M and red-L respectively when selecting them. If the price changes for any of these different sizes or color, you have to do the math every time. It sounds complicated, right? This is reason why almost online store owners find Magento extensions when using configurable product.

Besides, tier price also doesn’t work for configurable product in Magento 2 default.

Price of Configurable Product in the backend

Magento Grouped Product:

Meanwhile, using grouped product, you can make simple products: red-M T-shirt, red-L T-shirt with their own prices $40 and $45 respectively. Next, you add them to associated products in grouped product. These constituting items will be displayed with their own prices. If the price changes for the red-L T-shirt, you simply update its price then the grouped product will present the new price.

Price of Grouped Product in the frontend

The second interesting thing of grouped product in Magento 2 is tier price totally work well.

4. Add to Cart

Magento Configurable Product:

When using configurable product in Magento 2, customers only add each child product to cart.

Magento Grouped Product:

However, customers can conveniently add these group of products or multiple associated products to cart at once.

5. Conclusion

Magento Configurable Product:

This type of Magento product is still suitable for selling clothes with different size and color, which will have an appropriate performance for customers experience.

Magento Grouped Product:

You can use grouped product to sell multiple simple items as groups or sets such as set of clothes, set of furniture, and so on or you can sell clothes, furniture individually if you want.

Grouped product are used to integrate simple products for convenience of customers.

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